Increasingly, organizations are responsible for protecting individual's confidential and proprietary electronic information. For example, financial institutions collect and retain vast amounts of personal information in electronic format; therefore the storage and distribution of such information must be closely monitored. This is also true for medical organizations that must effectively collect, store and distribute vast amounts of electronic data while complying with HIPPA (Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act) and other regulations. Regulating access and distribution of electronic confidential information is more difficult than physical data as it is more readily copied and distributed. Thus, organizations with such information must closely monitor their employees and other individuals to ensure the information is protected, not only from disclosure, but inadvertent contamination.
Prior systems attempted to block certain activities, such as visiting certain sites on the Internet or accessing certain storage devices containing confidential information. Unfortunately, however, blocking sites alone does not provide any indication of a threat. Furthermore, while it may be desirable to block transmissions that pose a serious threat to the organization, blocking each transmission that violates any rule could reduce productivity, efficiency, and frustrate both the holder of the blocked user account, the IT department, and/or any third party that needs to receive the transmission, such as time-sensitive material. Additionally, many systems apply a “one size fits all” security policy, which cannot consider the type of user account being monitored.
Indeed, past attempts often focused on security events, and thus failed to adequately consider and/or account for actions of specific users or individuals. Accordingly, these systems cannot be configured to provide an overall threat rating that considers several different security measures for individuals within an entity or domain. For example, even if an entity has enacted several individual security measures, a specific user may not meet the “threshold” level to be considered a threat for each individual security measure, despite the fact that they have significantly high activity for several measures, and thus pose an overall threat. In contrast, a user who exceeds one security “threshold” level for only a single measure may incorrectly be deemed a security threat to the entity or domain. In this regard, current systems don't adequately consider individual characteristics of users or user accounts. For example, certain job responsibilities may require some users to have higher than usual activity levels or different access requirements.
Current systems for collecting data from different systems strain valuable resources. Often, the time spent collecting data exceeds the time available to stop or minimize the threat. Therefore, the lag in data does not present an up-to-date indication of the entity's current threats. Moreover, current systems do not allow quick analysis of threats that may readily be navigated for more precise information. Novel systems and methods that improve upon one or more of these and other deficiencies would be desirable.